Harrod Blank is a California native who grew up in the Bonny Doon
Mountains of Santa Cruz, where he attended high school and college. In
1989, he moved to Berkeley, where he currently lives part-time.
When Harrod Blank first realized that his '65 VW Beetle could be
treated as a canvas, the result was "Oh My God!". Painted like a beach
ball with a bumper of plastic fruit & rubber chickens, a chalkboard on
back and a TV on the roof, the car was the catalyst for his remarkable
career.
Initially, Blank thought he was the only one in the world with an Art
Car, and at times felt quite alienated. This would change, as he
gradually learned from supporters that there were other such cars,
spread out across the country. Drawing from what he had learned from
his father, filmmaker Les Blank, and the BA in
Theater Arts/Film he earned at UC Santa Cruz in 1986, Blank began
photographing other Art Cars. Subsequently, he raised money through
private investors and took out loans as needed to finance the 64-minute
documentary he dreamed of making:
Wild Wheels (1992).
To his credit, over 55 million people worldwide have now seen the film.
Blank initially distributed "Wild Wheels", featuring 46 Art Cars and
their respective artists, by driving "Oh My God!" with the film to 50
cities across the country. Publicity from the tour gained the interest
of PBS, which broadcast the film repeatedly as a National Special in
1993. The following year, Blank's photography was featured in a
companion book, "Wild Wheels" (Pomegranate, 1994; Blank Books, 2001),
which was named "Best Book for Young Adults" by the American Library
Association.
Blending his passion for Art Cars and his love of photography, Blank
was inspired by a dream to attach 1,705 cameras to a 1972 Dodge van.
Cleverly hiding ten working cameras among the rest, Blank had finally
found a way to capture on film the public's candid expressions of awe
and delight. In 1995, Blank drove the "Camera Van" to New York City for
its official "debut" and shot over 5,000 photographs for a photography
exhibit, "I've Got A Vision".
In 1995, still enthusiastic about the beauty and power of Art Cars,
Blank began production of a feature-length sequel to
Wild Wheels (1992). A short version
of the film
(Driving the Dream (1998), 29
minutes) was broadcast on TBS's National Geographic Explorer in October
1997 to help raise money for the epic feature-length film,
Automorphosis (2009), was premiered
January 2009 at the Santa Barbara International Film Festival. Thirteen
years in the making, "Automorphosis" is considered Harrod's life's work
up to this point.
Blank made his third Art Car in 1998, an interactive mariachi-themed
music mobile called "Pico De Gallo", later unveiled in his new book,
"Art Cars: the Cars, the Artists, the Obsession, the Craft" (Lark
Books, 2002). Gene Shalit heralded the book
on the Today (1952) Show as his
favorite holiday gift suggestion. The Petersen Automotive Museum hosted
a major exhibition of Art Cars in Spring 2003, of which Harrod Blank
was Guest Curator.
As of July 2010, Blank is releasing
Automorphosis (2009), and is
editing "Burning Man: the Movie", a documentary film thirteen years in
the making about the radical arts festival.
